Currently browsing posts about: Splenda

The creativity of marketers never ceases to amaze. Johnson & Johnson, maker of the artificial sweetener, Splenda, has a product-placement partnership with Harlem Heights, the BET reality show aimed at the black hip and fabulous. As the New York Times puts it, the partnership is about integration – this time of products into the daily business of cast members. The Times quotes BET’s vice-president for integrated marketing: “You need to…understand exactly where some of the natural, organic places for integrations are, so things don’t feel staged.”

A recent study in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health suggests that rats display metabolic problems when fed the artificial sweetener, Splenda, at doses within the range commonly consumed by humans (here’s a summary). The study was funded in part by the Sugar Association which, of course, is in competition with Splenda. Needless to say, the maker of Splenda, McNeal Nutritionals, objects strongly to these results. One objection is that this is a study done on rats. But rat studies do have some validity and and are worth serious consideration. Or as Erik Millstone and Tim Lang say in their new book, The Atlas of Food (to which I wrote the Foreword), “The food additives industry often treats the results of [animal] studies as valid when they show no adverse effects, but questions their relevance when they do suggest adverse effects.”